Media Deregulation Is Far From Good News
BY BRIAN LAMBERT
St. Paul Pioneer Press

Because Monday's vote by the FCC to further deregulate American
media had long
been considered a fait accompli, Chicken Little scenarios and legal
positioning
were well evolved before the commission's three Republicans trumped
its two
Democrats.

Despite assertions by Mel Karmazin of Viacom (CBS, Blockbuster,
Paramount)
and Rupert Murdoch of NewsCorp. (Fox, Fox News, TV Guide, New York
Post) that
they have no specific new acquisition targets in mind, and no
newspapers in
particular, you'll excuse anyone who declines to take either at his
word. Karmazin
and Murdoch were the two major personalities pushing to throw open
the gates
to another round of acquisition and expansion. Both require 24-hour
monitoring
and surveillance.

Despite the disingenuous if not wholly cynical blather of FCC
Chairman Michael
Powell, Monday's vote is antithetical to promoting diversity and
will allow,
if not guarantee, that Americans are served an ever-more-homogenized
news and
entertainment product by the same handful of gigantic entities that
already
control the majority of the most popular venues and channels.

If you doubt it, all you have to do is turn on your radio. The
Telecommunications
Act of 1996 was supposed to free up telephone and radio service to a
bold new
world of competition and choice. What we got, basically was
WorldCom, Qwest
and Clear Channel, or, as they're better known, Fraud, Incompetence
and Predatory
Blandness Inc.

That system got gamed, and there's every reason to suspect the TV
and newspaper
will get gamed this time around by people - executives at Viacom,
NewsCorp,
GE and Gannett - far more focused and motivated than any FCC
regulator.

Various consumer watchdog groups such as MoveOn and Common Cause
are poised
to take legal action to dilute if not repeal what the FCC has just
done. You
wish them luck. What do you figure are the Vegas odds on Common
Cause's attorneys
pile-driving the Viacom/Fox/GE/Gannett suits?

Wisconsin's U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, heir apparent to the Paul
Wellstone populist
mantle, has gotten essentially nowhere with his proposed legislation
to reign
in Clear Channel's control over the American music industry (it
controls everything
from record/artist promotion to airplay to concert tours to
billboards).

In a statement after Monday's vote, Feingold said, "It is
unfortunate
that the FCC did not consider the lessons we have learned over the
last seven
years from the consolidation in the radio industry." Powell (son of
Secretary
of State Colin Powell) has repeatedly complimented himself on the
FCC's exhaustive
pursuit of openness and public comment. Unfortunately, the process
Powell used
to arrive at this decision bears more resemblance to Vice President
Dick Cheney's
infamous hypersecret, industry-only "energy commission" than to any
kind of genuinely open public forum.

The Karmazins and Murdochs were all over Powell and the two other
"yes"
votes like pickpockets swarming a trio of chumpy, credulous
tourists. Pro-deregulation
media titans, not MoveOn or Common Cause, were granted closed-door
meetings
with Powell.

The watchdog group Center for Public Integrity reports that "FCC
officials
have taken 2,500 trips costing nearly $2.8 million over the last
eight years,
most of it from the telecommunications and broadcast industry the
agency regulates.
That was in addition to about $2 million a year in official travel
funded by
taxpayers."

And we're not talking jaunts for town meetings in Des Moines. "FCC
commissioners
and staffers attended hundreds of conventions, conferences and other
events
in locations all over the world, including Paris, Hong Kong, Rio de
Janeiro
staying in such high-priced hotels as the Bellagio in Las Vegas."
(In fairness,
the single largest junketmeister was the National Association of
Broadcasters,
which was lobbying against more deregulation.)